Archives for September 2015

This is the "priorities exercise" the Presbyterian Mission Agency board participated in Sept. 24 – not to actually allocate money, but to give board members a sense of the types of decisions they may face in crafting the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) mission budget for 2017 and 2018.
The PC(USA) faces the reality that its unrestricted reserves are drying up – they are expected to be exhausted by the end of 2016 – and that some ministry areas are funded more heavily with unrestricted dollars.
Text of the exercise follows:
The Presbyterian Mission Program Fund (PMPF) is the unrestricted fund for the Presbyterian Mission Agency. We are required to maintain a reserve of uncommitted funds that total at least 30% of the unified portion of the General Assembly Mission (now Presbyterian Mission Agency) Budget for cash flow and contingency. To restore the required reserve of uncommitted funds, the Mission Agency must cut its expenses related to programs that require significant … [Read more...]

NEW YORK (RNS) Pope Francis told world leaders gathered at the United Nations on Friday (Sept. 25) they must work to protect creation because “a true ‘right of the environment’ does exist” — a right he said was bound up with a moral duty to assure the basic needs of “the vast ranks of the excluded.”
The global environment and the world’s powerless, he added “are closely interconnected and made increasingly fragile by dominant political and economic relationships.
“That is why their rights must be forcefully affirmed, by working to protect the environment and by putting an end to exclusion.”
Throughout his address to the U.N.’s General Assembly, the pope repeatedly linked caring for the environment to caring for the poor, a central theme of his landmark document, the encyclical “Laudato Si’,” released in June to much controversy, that called for combating global warming and rebalancing the world’s economic priorities.
Francis then went to the heart of the matter, … [Read more...]

A Kentucky state court judge has issued a ruling dismissing the defamation lawsuit that Roger Dermody, the former deputy executive director for mission, brought against the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) involving the 1001 New Worshiping Communities investigation.
Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Judith McDonald-Burkman issued a ruling September 22 granting the PC(USA)’s motion for summary judgment in the Dermody case. The PC(USA) had asked that the lawsuit be ended, contending that claims brought in it involve “quintessential matters of faith and polity.”
Dermody and three other PC(USA) employees – Philip Lotspeich, Eric Hoey and Craig S. Williams– lost their jobs in June 2015 following an investigation involving an unauthorized $100,000 grant sent to a nonprofit corporation set up in California. All of the money was repaid, and Linda Valentine, former executive director of the Presbyterian Mission Agency, has said none of the four acted for personal gain.
In her ruling, … [Read more...]

LOUISVILLE (PNS) The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship voted last week to divest its endowment of fossil fuel extraction investments during the Fellowship’s national gathering in Stony Point, N.Y. The PPF endowment is invested at the New Covenant Trust Company of the Presbyterian Foundation.
“We are divesting of fossil fuels precisely because we are a peacemaking organization,” said Emily Brewer, the Fellowship’s co-director in a press release. “For our children, grandchildren and those who come after them, unmitigated climate change will lead to a future of war and violence over access to drinkable water, breathable air, safe food and diminishing land. We sound this alarm to reduce that violence. Already some impoverished communities, least responsible for climate change, are early victims of it. On this most complex issue, we act out of faith in a creator God and a love for creation itself.”
In addition to divestment, the PPF affirmed the need to create numerous strategies for … [Read more...]

LOUISVILLE (PNS) Heath Rada, Moderator of the 221st General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.),presents his "Call to the Church" – a request for a study of the form, function and mission ofthe PC(USA). Recorded at the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board Meeting, Sept. 23, 2015. … [Read more...]

Heath Rada, moderator of the 2014 General Assembly, has issued an urgent “Call to the Church” – a call for reform of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A), naming a “a lack of trust across the church” and saying it’s imperative for the denomination to act soon.
Rada’s call carries with it a sense that change is seeping the PC(USA), whether the denomination is ready for it or not. The leadership at the top is changing; money is running tight; and “there is a profound and rapid change in the world around us that has put the church’s relevance in question in ways we have not seen in our lifetime,” he said.
“We do not have the luxury of time to discern and to debate,” Rada said in remarks prepared for the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board, meeting in Louisville Sept. 23-25.
Rada’s call to the church grew out of conversations he and other Presbyterian leaders were having about funding for PC(USA) World Mission – and the projections which show that World Mission may face a $4.5 … [Read more...]